When i load up it tell me its using DX 8.1, a tad old imo..
i was wondering if VO supports DX9 or not, or will it ever be?
or have i done somthing wrong for VO to use only DX8.

it does use direct X 8.1

It functions just fine.
No real reason to upgrade, or as a very wise man once said:
"if it aint broke, dont fix it!"

It will support DX9 in the near future. We've actually had an internal branch of a DX9-supporting driver for quite a while, and Ray mentioned to me yesterday that he will probably make it available in an upcoming patch.

What about OpenGL 2.0?

Are there cards that support OpenGL 2.0 on the market???
:[ ]

how the hell did i miss that?

I've never understood why crossplatform games bother with developing for opengl AND direct3d, especially games with a small dev team. There must be a reason though, anyone care to enlighten?

Also, the new (as of yesterday) linux nvidia drivers have this in the changelog: "Improved support for GLSL (OpenGL Shading Language)" Will that be affecting Vendetta in any way?

DirectX allows much more advanced features than anything besides OpenGL2 will. To do the same things in OpenGL 1.x, you need to use vendor-specific extensions, which is annoying.

Yes, basically, it's easiest to prototype new features in DirectX, and then backport them one-by-one into OpenGL (which, as rogue says, requires vendor-specific extensions in 1.x and is generallly a mess from a shader standpoint).

Also, we haven't been concerned about DX9 to date, as we only use Pixel Shader 1.1 features thus far. We've always intended to also add DX9 (PS 2.0) support eventually, but making the game look cool on the broadest base of cards was more important. A large percentage of the installed based of videocards (GeForce Ti, Radeon 8500-9000, various mobility / "go" chipsets) only support 1.1, or the DirectX 8.1 featureset.

Don't forget support for AA higher than 4x, variable levels of Anistropy and all those other nice DX9-level features.

Mainly because OpenGL support under Windows is generally terrible.

I don't know if GLSL is supported in Vendetta yet. We support ARB_fragment_program and ATI_text_fragment_shader now. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the OpenGL 1.x shader mess, unfortunately.

But why would it matter if OGL support under Windows sucks? They don't need it, as they've got DirectX.

Well, the question was why we support both APIs. People like Carmack do not. But people like Carmack have companies custom-writing their video drivers and APIs for whatever he could possibly desire. We umm.. don't.

ctish, a1k0n was still answering the "Why have DirectX at all" question...

I'm fine with basic OpenGL 1.x support, but then I'm running on a low-end PowerBook with no full-screen bloom FX and no shader support, so there ya go :)

'Course, OpenGL 2.0 fixes all the shader support issues, so it's just a matter of waiting for nVidia and ATI to get off their butts and start making OGL2-compliant drivers. *crosses fingers*

BTW, alk0n, as a question: why do you say OGL support under Windows is generally terrible? With ATI, I'd probably agree (but then, ATI's DX support ain't great either) but at least with nVidia, their OGL drivers generally outperform their DX drivers. Not by much, mind you, but it's there, and they certainly don't lag behind... Just wondering what part of the support you think is bad?

--mcn

Thats cool to hear that it's in the works
What about support for ATI-Trueform?
or am i pushing things now?

"Ray mentioned to me yesterday that he will probably make it(dx9) available in an upcoming patch."

What kind of dx9 enhancements will you guys be implementing?